abolition of the temporal power in Italy we have nowhere in Christian lands any such theocratic union of Caesar and the Church, so that secular and religious advance is left more or less unhampered; whereas in Islam the hierarchico-political constitution has hopelessly welded the secular arm with the spiritual in one common scepter, to the furthering of despotism, and elimination of the popular voice from its proper place in the concerns of State.

[Sidenote:  The Koran checks progress.] And so, throughout the whole range of political, religious, social, and domestic relations, the attempt made by the founder of Islam to provide for all contingencies, and to fix every thing aforehand by rigid rule and scale, has availed to cramp and benumb the free activities of life and to paralyze the natural efforts of society at healthy growth, expansion, and reform.  As an author already quoted has so well put it, “The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey it is to abandon progress."[79]

[Sidenote:  Is Islam suitable for any nation?] Writers have indeed been found who, dwelling upon the benefits conferred by Islam on idolatrous and savage nations, have gone so far as to hold that the religion of Mohammed may in consequence be suited to certain portions of mankind—­as if the faith of Jesus might peaceably divide with it the world.  But surely to acquiesce in a system which reduces the people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy.  With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible.  As I have said elsewhere: 

The eclipse in the East, which still sheds its blight on the ancient seats of Jerome and Chrysostom, and shrouds in darkness the once bright and famous sees of Cyprian and Augustine, has been disastrous every-where to liberty and progress, equally as it has been to Christianity.  And it is only as that eclipse shall pass away and the Sun of righteousness again shine forth that we can look to the nations now dominated by Islam sharing with us those secondary but precious fruits of divine teaching.  Then with the higher and enduring blessings which our faith bestows, but not till then, we may hope that there will follow likewise in their wake freedom and progress, and all that tends to elevate the human race.[80]

[Sidenote:  No sacrifice for sin or redemptive grace.] Although with the view of placing the argument on independent ground I have refrained from touching the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and the inestimable benefits which flow to mankind therefrom, I may be excused, before I conclude, if I add a word regarding them.  The followers of Mohammed have no knowledge of God as a Father; still less have they knowledge